April 14, 2025

April 13, 2025

THAT WAS FAST: Suspect arrested in arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence as family slept inside. “Investigators believe the attack was ‘targeted,’ but haven’t determined a specific motive.”

Well, that’s helpful. I mean, arson of a home is generally “targeted.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 9:34 pm by Glenn Reynolds 213

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds 1038

WHY GEN Z MEN ARE MOVING RIGHT:

Posted at 9:25 pm by Glenn Reynolds 100

YEP:

Posted at 7:36 pm by Glenn Reynolds 204

I TAKE A SUPPLEMENT: What Happens to Your Brain Without Vitamin K? New Study Reveals Surprising Effects. I’ve noticed that it’s beneficial for your skin. I had some keratosis spots on the back of my hands, which my dermatologist called “barnacles that we pick up as we sail the seas of life.” After I took Vitamin K for a while they disappeared. Apparently they don’t normally do that on their own.

Posted at 7:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 112

SORRY, YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO REPLACE LAWYERS WITH AI UNTIL I’M READY TO RETIRE:

Key bit: “In some instances, the models provided answers superior to the human-established ground truth.”

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 69

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: How Sweden’s multicultural dream went fatally wrong.

Barely a week passes in Sweden today without a teenager being arrested for such a hit, keeping Salihu extremely busy, and the public in the grip of a national crisis like no other before it. A softly-spoken former tabloid journalist, the 41-year-old could be a character from a Scandi-noir novel, shining light in society’s darker corners. The body count on his beat, though, is far higher than any Stieg Larsson novel, and holds out little prospect of a satisfactory ending.

For the story he has pursued for the last decade is, in effect, one giant, unsolved murder mystery: why has Sweden, long the envy of the rest of Europe for its peace and prosperity, suddenly seeing so many gangland killings?

Why, in a land that prides itself on welcoming migrants, are so many gang members from migrant communities? And is it Swedish society that is the ultimate culprit, or the migrant communities themselves?

* * * * * * * * *

So what has gone wrong? Part of the blame, Salihu says, is down to the social blights common to most of Europe’s more impoverished multi-racial neighbourhoods. Joblessness and discrimination limit many youngsters’ sense of prospects. TV gang dramas, meanwhile, often “highlight the flashy parts of gang life – money, respect, power – but leave out the trauma, manipulation, and tragic consequences.”

Yet the sense of failure is all the more acute in Sweden, long an open door compared to other European nations. Ever since the 1960s, when it first styled itself as a humanitarian superpower, it has taken in those fleeing trouble abroad, be it Americans fleeing the Vietnam war draft, Soviet dissidents, or Iraqis fleeing Saddam Hussein’s regime. In the 1990s came refugees from the Balkans, and in the last decade asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan and sub-Saharan Africa have arrived. Anxious not to create “parallel societies”, Swedish governments have long funded social integration programmes alongside the waves of migration.

Earlier: Nearly two thirds of convicted rapists in Sweden are migrants or second generation immigrants.

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 199

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS THE ECONOMIST: The Economist Declares Europe the New ‘Land of the Free,’ and Holy Cow, the Replies.

Our “closest ally” arrested a 64-year-old woman for silently praying outside an abortion clinic.

A 64-year-old woman was convicted Friday of standing near an abortion clinic in southern England and holding a sign saying “Here to talk, if you want.”

The case provides further evidence of an erosion of freedom of expression in the United Kingdom, which has recently become a diplomatic issue with the United States.

During the 2024 incident that was brought before the court, Livia Tossici-Bolt was standing silently holding the sign and having “consensual conversations” with people passing by, according to her legal team. However, she was within what is called a “buffer zone,” which criminalizes the “influencing” of people within 150 meters (about 500 feet) of an abortion clinic in the U.K.

Isn’t it weird that The Economist didn’t mention that in their article? Or how about the case where two men were arrested for posting negative views about immigration, accused of stirring up “racial-hatred?” Both received over a year in prison. In an unrelated incident, another man was arrested and charged for burning a Quran.

And early this month, Greater Manchester Police arrested a man “on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence” for publicly burning a Quran. An assistant chief constable said police “made a swift arrest at the time and recognise the right people have for freedom of expression, but when this crosses into intimidation to cause harm or distress we will always look to take action when it is reported to us.”

Europe has become obsessed with combatting what they call “Islamophobia” while Islamist migrants create no-go zones and commit heinous crimes. In Sweden, one Iraqi refugee was assassinated by Muslims for burning the Quran. What did the Swedish government do? It charged another man who also burned the Quran with “incitement.” No, I’m not kidding.

And then there’s Europe’s free and fair “elections:” The EU’s Stranglehold on Democracy.

UPDATE: This Is Britain: Mother Jailed For 2 Years Because of a Tweet She Deleted After 4 Hours.

MORE:

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 236

UNEXPEXCTEDLY: Say What? CNN Claims Only the Right Has an ‘Extremism Problem.’

“[W]hen it comes to extremism in this country, I mean, the issue very much so is on the right, on the far-right from — you know, from Charlottesville to — to January 6. There isn’t exactly an equivalent on the left in this moment,” [Donie] O’Sullivan claimed with a straight face.

Seriously? Has O’Sullivan been living under a rock? President Trump has survived two assassination attempts in just the past year. Let’s not forget the 2017 congressional baseball shooting, where a deranged MSNBC viewer nearly gunned down an entire group of Republican lawmakers. Or the BLM riots of 2020, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle, and the rise of Antifa violence.  How about the leftist cheerleading for Hamas on college campuses across America that has made Jewish students feel unsafe? And, of course, there’s the #TeslaTakedown movement, with extremists firebombing dealerships and vandalizing vehicles.

But I guess none of that qualifies as “extremism” in CNN’s warped worldview.

Not over the past decade:



UPDATE: Taylor Lorenz Laughs Off Obsession With ‘Handsome’ Luigi Mangione to CNN: He Seems ‘Morally Good – Which is Hard to Find.’

Lorenz sat down with CNN’s MisinfoNation host Donie O’Sullivan for Sunday’s episode of the series. O’Sullivan shared a snippet of the conversation to his X account early Sunday morning, showing Lorenz speaking candidly about why she believes Mangione’s actions – and his looks – have struck a nerve with fans of the alleged assassin.

“To see these millionaire media pundits on TV clutching their pearls about someone stanning a murderer when this is the United States of America,” Lorenz said, “As if we don’t lionize criminals, as if we don’t have, you know, we don’t stan murderers of all sorts, and we can give them Netflix shows. There’s a huge disconnect between the narratives and the angles that mainstream media pushes and what the American public feels.”

When O’Sullivan asked about the groups of women who have gathered outside Mangione’s court hearings in New York, Lorenz laughed.

“You’re going to see women especially that feel like, Oh my God, right? Like, here’s this man who’s revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who is young, who’s smart,” she said. “He’s a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find.”

O’Sullivan quipped, “Yeah, I just realized women will literally date an assassin before they swipe right on me. That’s where we’re at.”

The two agreed sympathy for Mangione was not unlike fandom for supporters of President Donald Trump.

That last sentence neatly, if unintentionally, sums up CNN’s woes perfectly.

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 164

GENE KOPELSON: RIP Thomas C. Reed: Reagan’s First Campaign Manager.

The world of President Ronald Reagan’s colleagues and friends continues to suffer losses with the recent deaths of speechwriter Tony Dolan and national security adviser Richard V. Allen. Those men have received due tributes, but one figure who has not gotten the acknowledgment he deserved was Thomas C. Reed (1934-2024). Tom passed away a little over a year ago, and I knew him well and worked with him. Tom and his critically important roles in the history and life of Ronald Reagan remain largely unknown to the world and even to almost all Reagan historians. Consider this a belated farewell and tribute.

I first met Tom via a phone call in 2012, as I was starting work on exploring Reagan’s first presidential campaign, in 1968. That campaign itself is often forgotten, written off as a last-minute waste of time by almost every other Reagan historian (most people think Reagan’s first presidential campaign was in 1976). Tom quickly assured me that, in fact, those historians were wrong. Tom’s generosity surfaced, as he shared the meticulous notes he had kept of the entire first presidential campaign, which began a scant nine days after he had won the governorship of California in 1966, and ended at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach the summer of 1968.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 32

STEPHEN MILLER: The left gives up on saving the planet.

Another famous Tesla owner in Congress has her eyes on the White House. Hipster congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – who is alleged to have illegally parked her Tesla outside a DC Whole Foods – is champion and co-sponsor of the Green New Deal. She is also sympathetic to EV mandates. How is she going to explain her activist base’s sudden turn against the only real EVs people want to buy?

And what of Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who captured the hearts of the global climate elite with her scolding speeches and theatrical arrests? Greta seems to have abandoned the climate cause recently for something much closer to her heart – donning a keffiyeh and preaching solidarity with Palestine after Hamas’s massacre of Jews in Southern Israel on October 7.

Perhaps it was all performative all along. Perhaps they really have leaned into the doomsday cult cliché their critics have all accused them of being. Or maybe they truly believe the planet is no longer worth saving. Either way, they have set all of their climate credibility on fire.

Related: Great moments in Luddism: That’ll Teach Elon a Lesson! Soy Boy Lefty Throws a Pie at Optimus Robot Display (Watch).

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 130